To achieve an optimal therapeutic effect in humans or animals, various methods and processes have been developed to administer pharmaceutical compounds. A number of routes of administration have been developed for drug delivery including nasal, oral, intramuscular, intravenous, anal, and vaginal. These routes have shown varying degrees of success for different types of pharmaceuticals.
It is generally very expensive to develop new drug molecules and then bring them to market. There also have been numerous older drugs that initially showed promise but proved to be too toxic and/or unstable to use as medications. The use of alternative delivery techniques holds the potential to increase safety and/or efficacy for these and other drugs. The costs associated with developing such techniques are generally much lower than those associated with identifying and developing a completely novel drug.
There remains a need for drug delivery techniques having relatively broad applicability.